With the rapid development of Internet technologies, the information amount in networks grows exponentially, and a manner in which before an application (or media content) required by a user is loaded, information spreading is performed by playing (exposing) information to the user is widely used.
In the existing technology, when the number of times of playback of information within a preset time needs to reach a pre-determined amount, first it is required to predict an information playback inventory, that is, a playback amount (exposure amount) of the information when users load network applications in a time period; and an information processing task is created according to the predicted information playback inventory and the pre-determined amount, to determine which resource is to be used to play the information, duration (how many days) in which the information is to be played, and the number of times that the information is to be played by using the resource in each day, that is, a pre-determined amount for the same day. Herein, the resource is which position in a page of a client that provides an application to a terminal user (that is, an information playback client) is available for information playback, directional information of information playback (for different groups), and the number of times that the information can be played within the preset time.
When information playback time specified in the information processing task begins, a playback task corresponding to a preset time granularity (for example, in the unit of day) is generated according to a resource specified in the information processing task, where the playback task instructs to: within the preset time granularity, provide the information played by the information playback client of the resource and the number of times of playback of the information, so that the information playback client performs a corresponding operation, to play the information to the terminal user.
The existing technology has the following problems: Because the number of times that the user accesses the information playback client that provides the application to load the application on the terminal cannot be accurately predicted, that is, the number of times, provided by the resource, that the information can be played cannot be precisely determined, it is caused that when one information processing task is completed, an actual playback amount of the information is usually inconsistent with the pre-determined amount; therefore, when the actual playback amount of the information does not reaches the pre-determined amount of the resource, a new information processing task further needs to be created, to make up the difference between the pre-determined amount for information playback and the actual playback amount, which usually affects the expected effect of information playback; and when the actual playback amount of the information exceeds the pre-determined amount, additional consumption of the information playback inventory is caused and the information spreading cost is increased.
In conclusion, in the existing technology, there is no effective technical solution yet for how to complete a pre-determined amount of a resource in advance, or how to delay completing a pre-determined amount of a resource in a case in which the resource is popular.